It is an affair of the heart: The Maple Leaf captain and sick kids from SickKids.

He gives them a night to remember and a few precious hours of forgetting. They give him the wide-eyed wonder of children and a poignant reality check.

Dion Phaneuf says he’s getting the better part of the deal. “It puts everything into perspective.”

On this evening, the perspective these youngsters are enjoying is from Phaneuf’s private box in the north-west end of the Air Canada Centre. There’s pizza and popcorn and soft drinks, and, oh yes, hockey.

A four-year-old with a tracheotomy squirms in his mother’s arms, reaching a tiny hand towards the action on the ice, as if he could almost touch the players below. That’s Sawyer and he had surgery for a heart defect within a week of his birth, only the start of a challenging lifetime. An 11-year-old, baseball hat pulled over fine fair hair, giggles with her best friend. That’s Jess and she has a brain tumour, discovered in November. Jess has been undergoing chemotherapy treatment for the past seven weeks. And that’s 8-year-old Gordon. He’s just fine. But his little sister Allyson, suffering from leukemia, is spending her 140th straight night at the Hospital for Sick Children, too ill to join in this excursion, watched over by mom while dad accompanies their son for this rare treat, an outing un-tethered from the beep of medical equipment and the sterilized surroundings of a hospital ward.

It is a chance to feel normal again, not like families seized by crisis.

Phaneuf and the Leafs have provided them with that. And they are tenderly grateful.

“Sometimes, you really do get to see the rich side of people’s human side,” says David Rosenbloom, Jess’ dad.

Phaneuf plays a game for a living. These youngsters are fighting to live, and to play again.

“It’s something that means a lot to me, to be able to have the kids here, to get them out of the hospital, get their mind off of why they might be there,” Phaneuf says later. “It’s important, not just for the kids, but for their parents as well — a night away from the hospital, watch a hockey game, enjoy the evening.

“It’s close to my heart.”

On days when maybe he’s not quite feeling the love of Leaf Nation — and there had been quite a few of those recently — Phaneuf still has this: the knowledge that he is bringing pleasure into the lives of children, game in and game out, regardless of score or outcome. The field trips from Sick Kids are an escape for them and an emotional release for him, too. Some nights, Phaneuf will come upstairs afterwards to visit with his excited young guests. Earlier this season, Phaneuf spent 20 minutes talking to a 9-year-old boy who’d already been through three heart surgeries and was wait-listed for a transplant. It was the second time Jordan Landry had watched a game from the Phaneuf box. Captain and agog boy chatted about hockey, about Jordan’s favourite drink (Gatorade, off limits because of his low-sodium diet) and Phaneuf’s new puppy. The following morning, word arrived that a heart had become available. Sadly, Jordan did not survive the 15-hour surgery.

“There’s so much fight, so much courage in these kids,” says Phaneuf. “It’s inspirational. They’re dealing with life-threatening illnesses. Some are real sick and it seems so unfair. They can come to a game and feel like a normal kid again. But at the end of the day, they’re in the hospital for serious things and they’ll go back there.”

In his own life, Phaneuf has a cousin who was diagnosed with a facial tumour at age 15. “He was able to fight through it. I saw what kind of courage he had to do that. It’s definitely something that’s very close to home for me.”

The Leafs have had a long history with SickKids and childrens’ charities, as evident from some of the photographs on the wall at the ACC of players past and present huddling around grinning youngsters in hospital beds. They regularly visit patients at the world-renowned institution, often doing so quietly with no cameras present. Over the years, some Leafs have purchased private boxes for express philanthropic use. Phaneuf staked his claim his first full season in Toronto, continuing a tradition he’d begun with the Alberta Children’s Hospital in Calgary. “It’s a big part of me.”

Tickets for all home games are distributed through the Child Life program at Sick Kids which arranges, among a wide range of other attentive services, recreational activities for patients and their families.

They are deeply appreciative.

“I was thinking of all the great captains and leaders on Leaf teams,” muses Rosenbloom, father of keen Leaf-fan Jess. “When you do something like this, you’re a captain of the community, too.”

Jess adds: “Dion Phaneuf is so kind to donate the box to kids like me. If I got to meet him I’d ask, what does it feel like, having all the pressure of playing in the NHL?”

This from a child who appears sweetly oblivious to the stresses of her own weekly chemo sessions.

Rosenbloom’s sentiments are echoed by Matthew Sherlock, Gordon’s school teacher dad, immensely thankful to Phaneuf and SickKids for being able to have a joyful father-son experience, nine months into two-year-old daughter Allyson’s chemo regime, which has exhausted the entire Barrie family.

“You lead on the ice and you lead in the community. Nights like this restore your faith in mankind.”

Sawyer’s mom, Kayla Schultz, has put her son on the floor and he wanders around curiously. In the hospital, at this point for three months, Sawyer suffers from a severe immunodeficiency disorder called DiGeorge Syndome, but, at the moment, he’s just a mischievous kid mugging for a photographer. “This is an opportunity I would never have been able to give him.”

On this evening, splayed on the trainer’s game post-game undergoing treatment for a painful hit absorbed in the third period, Phaneuf is unable to come upstairs before the kids, starting to nod off, need to get back to the hospital. But he sends an emissary with signed photographs and an armful of Maple Leaf backpacks.

The children love their loot. They depart happy.

Jess leaves behind a note for the Leaf captain:

“You are so awesome, great and nice, #1 on the Leafs.”

Signed: Jess/beating treated at Sick Kids, 11.

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